"To Philosophize Is To Learn How To Die"

   In reading Critchley’s article, “To Philosophize Is To Learn How To Die,” I found many ideas that were extremely interesting to me and stood out to me. Critchley brings up a good point about fear followed by another about anxiety which are two feelings that the world has felt greatly throughout the past six months, so we are all no stranger to them. Through referring to Aristotle’s idea that, “Fear is our reaction to an actual threat in the world,” Critchley shows us that fear is caused by an actual threat, and typically when someone does not know what is to come from something going on, they will experience fear. Anxiety is more complicated than fear. Anxiety, defined by Critchley, is, “a state in which the particular facts of the world recede from view.” To me anxiety is that feeling of being “on-edge”; it is that uncontrollable feeling of worry along with intrusive thoughts and increased irritability and restlessness. Critchley states that there has been a fear of getting the virus, but behind this, people experience deep anxiety mainly towards the thought of ourselves dying or the thought of others dying.

Conversations about death and mortality, tend to be avoided at all costs. These conversation topics make people so uncomfortable that they instantly will turn away from them, and that is due to the lack of knowledge people have about death. To me, people experience death everyday. Plans get cancelled, food goes bad, the weather switches unexpectedly, we swat a fly in our kitchen, someone moves away, etc. These cancellations or minor changes could be considered the death of ideas or future plans. We don’t know what happens after our bodies die just like we don’t know what would’ve happened if the plans we made with our friends didn’t get cancelled. When you constantly are thinking about the negative occurrences of cancellations or deaths of future events in your life, you fall a slave to these negative, intrusive thoughts. Critchley shows a quote from Montaigne which says, “He who has learned to die has unlearned how to be a slave.” Those who fear death so much that they don’t like to talk about it are those who are slaves to it. Death is the one thing in our life that is entirely certain, and it cannot be changed. I have heard people say things about how we work so hard in life everyday just to die in the end, and I have always wondered why death is such a terrible thing to happen to them. They don’t know what comes of death nor do they know what happens after. We physically are gone, but are we gone mentally or emotionally? Our bodies are not what is powerful, but our minds are, and I do not believe that the mind ever dies. 

The pandemic has been a scary thing, but we as humans have learned to grow with it. We have made changes to our daily life. What we are doing this year is not at all what we would have expected to do, but we’re doing it. Who knows where we will be next year? We have all now experienced what it is like to have genuinely nothing to do except have responsibility over what we plan to do with our days. If you look at everything in life as a chance to grow, you will grow, but if you look at everything as something unknown and scary, you will experience anxiety and great fears. Some people believe happiness and freedom are masked by stress, anxiety, and discomfort, but these people are those who do not look at stress or discomfort as chances to grow instead they look at them as huge inconveniences.  Critchley’s article opened my eyes to many things that were right in front of me, and I agree with his thoughts on anxiety, fear, death, and freedom.